Sustainable Estates for the 21st Century

Researching land ownership and management in upland Scotland

Sustainable upland estate management in Scotland

The Sustainable Estates for the 21st Century project was
funded by the Henry Angest Foundation.

Further work on the project has also been supported by the
Economic and Social Research Council, Scottish Government and
Scottish Land and Estates:

Sustainable Upland Estate Management

The Sustainable Estates for the 21st Century project
was carried out at the Centre
for Mountain Studies, Perth College, University of the Highlands and
Islands, between 2007 and 2012. The work included four
projects funded by the Henry Angest Foundation. This website gives
more information about the project.

The overall aim of the project was to align upland estate management
in Scotland with the concept of sustainability.

This was in recognition of the fact that there has been
little academic and policy attention paid to how different ownership
types and management objectives relate to the principles of
sustainability. Past work on estates has focused on individual estates
or particular sectors, and little has been done since the Land Reform
(Scotland) Act in 2003. To ensure the on-the-ground relevance of the
research, an Advisory Group helped to design the project and met with
the researchers once a year. The five group members represented key
stakeholder groups (Scottish
Land and Estates, Cairngorms
National Park Authority, Knoydart
Foundation, Scottish Environment
LINK) and the Scottish
Government.

The research findings will be increasingly relevant in the context of
the rapidly evolving rural policy context in Scotland, for example with
the implementation of the Scotland Rural Development Programme (SRDP), the
development and implementation of the Land Use Strategy, and wider
debates about CAP reform.